Many Roth conversion calculators skip two important costs: what you lose in ACA subsidies during your conversion years, and what a dollar today is actually worth against a dollar saved decades from now. This one puts both in the model.
It’s the companion to the Roth conversion series, built to test the framework against your own situation. Enter your age, expected retirement timing, account balances, current tax rate, and the years you’re considering for conversions. The calculator shows what each conversion amount costs you in federal tax and lost subsidies, then discounts the future tax savings back to today’s dollars so you can see whether the trade is worth making.
You’ll see the conversion costs and the discounting laid out year by year, not collapsed into a single “convert $X” answer. The goal is to help you understand the decision, not to hand you a verdict.
A few honest limitations: this is a modeling tool for people retiring before Medicare who buy ACA coverage, not a substitute for a full tax projection. It doesn’t handle state taxes, business income, or stock compensation, and it assumes current federal tax law holds.
